OT:
I'm so glad to see movie review sites not being paid off by Hollywood anymore to write gushing reviews of terrible movies, and finally getting back to writing brutally honest critical reviews of terrible movies.
https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/movies/rebel-moon-part-one-a-child-of-fire-review-zack-snyder-netflix-1234935678/
I'm so glad to see movie review sites not being paid off by Hollywood anymore to write gushing reviews of terrible movies, and finally getting back to writing brutally honest critical reviews of terrible movies.
https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/movies/rebel-moon-part-one-a-child-of-fire-review-zack-snyder-netflix-1234935678/
There is now no more money left to write woke propaganda in support of terrible woke movies such as Indiana Jones and The British Arsehole Woman.
Hollywood has pretty much died on its ass this year. If it hadn't been for Barbie and Oppenheimer literally almost all Hollywood movies over $100 million can be considered failures this year (Super Mario Bros is a French/Japanese made movie distributed by Universal).
There's been some decent stuff I thought this year, but people just don't have the cinema attention span anymore and I think Disney's woke agenda ridden movies over the last several years, burned so many people out of a fun few hours for an evening out, it most likely had a massive effect on other stuff, even if it was good.
Gran Turismo, The Creator, Talk To Me, Mission Impossible 7. They were all decent movies.
But why go to the cinema, when you can watch these at home on streaming in 4K so soon these days?
As for what's out now:
Wonka is pretty decent, -if you like the original- but realistically; it probably didn't need to be made.
Saw Godzilla Minus One again this evening in Imax, phenomenal, such a great experience. Stellar sound, effects and soundtrack. It's a very heartfelt bit of entertainment with not a minute wasted.
My favourite movie of the year and probably my favourite foreign movie.
Somehow it felt to me like it's possibly cinema's last hurrah, after Top Gun Maverick, which I thought was a great love letter to cinema also -bringing out all the fun from the 80s nostalgia but even better than before. Godzilla Minus One feels like you are watching Jaws, Jurassic Park and Saving Private Ryan rolled into one. I'm not sure where you can go from there. It feels like it's perhaps the last stop somehow.
The cinema experience, as good as it can be in Imax, does feel outdated. The last several showings I've been to (I checked my watch) - they LITERALLY started the movie 30 (!) minutes after the advertised showing time.
Too many fucking adverts and repeated trailers, that have been stretched from 20-25 minutes in previous years, an advert for the advertising company itself, Digital Cinema Media, played twice with utterly horrendous music that hasn't changed for years, Pepsi, Audi, adverts for the cinema itself - I get it, I'm already a member, do I really have to sit through that?
Cinema came back after Covid but it's now falling off a cliff. I've never seen the cinema busy after Oppenheimer, except for a few £5 showings of classics. I can sit in the middle of the Imax screen on Saturday 8pm during every blockbuster's first weekend, buy my ticket at the cinema and have no people around me. That never used to be possible before. Like I said, Oppenheimer was the exception this year.
Young people are not going to sit through 30 minutes of claptrap anymore when there are much easier ways to get entertainment.
Mainstream cinema is thus I think mostly dead, I can't see how it can come back. I think many multiplexes will close. Those in need of refurbishment won't survive.
People can pay less to block out all adverts on YouTube on all their devices for just 10 bucks a month or get savvy with an adblocker if needed.
Endless entertainment. Or 10 bucks for Netflix. Sure some of it, like Zack Snyder's new venture also suck ass, but many original series are pretty good.
Disney definitely buried cinema sooner than it needed to with its ridiculous injected woke propaganda after it gained massive power over cinema-chains at the height of the Marvel and Pixar successes, transforming Star Wars and Marvel into women only franchises, and like you said, its brown envelope critics that kept their pretend shite going for some years. The strike was an opportunity to cancel many projects even though writers and actors thought a better deal was possible. There simply won't be the amount of work any more, impossible with the failures we've seen. Studios are (nearly) broke. Streaming isn't anywhere near as profitable unless you are Netflix, or an Amazon or Apple with boat load of other revenue streams.
Deadpool 3 will fail, the Star Wars Rey movie will fail. It's pretty much over for $200-$300 million dollar Disney blockbusters I think. Toy Story 5 - really? 4 was already unnecessary!
The next failure will be Aquaman 2 I reckon. Warner Brothers will probably have to make a deal with Netflix for its DC stuff to help them.
The old paid for critics and many woke movie makers better learn programming...
--sorry for the long rant.
